Posts Tagged ‘prison’
November 9th, 2012
Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti was allegedly
tortured to death in a prison in Tehran on Thursday (8 November). Beheshti, 35 was arrested on 28 October by Iranian police on charges of “actions against national security on social networks and Facebook.” The human rights defender had received death threats as a result of his anti-government blog and had reportedly filed a complaint about torture during his time in the detention facility. His family say they were told by police to pick up his body on Wednesday and have been prevented from visiting his grave, with the exception of his brother-in-law. France and Britain have called on Tehran to investigate.
February 13th, 2012
Prominent Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja has been serving a life sentence since April 2011 for his involvement in anti-government protests last year. Al-Khawaja, who is also a Danish citizen, recently wrote a letter from prison to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to push for his release
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June 1st, 2011
A journalist who was imprisoned for 10 months for “publishing “information that discredits the state and economy” has vowed expose overcrowding in Burundi’s state prisons.
Jean-Claude Kavumbagu is planning to draw on his experience of life behind bars in Mpimpa Prison to expose the issue of overcrowding. The editor of news site Net Press said: “My plan is to draw attention to this and get the authorities to put it right.” Kavumbagu was released from prison earlier this month after
campaigns by human rights groups and pressure from Western governments.
April 16th, 2011
The
Syrian authorities have arrested an Algerian freelance journalist working for a French radio station. Khaled Sid Mohnad was
picked up on 9 April and is thought to be in a Damascus prison. His arrest
follows that of Syrian writer and former political prisoner Fayez Sara, who was arrested on 11 April after attending an opposition meeting. In total 11 journalists have been arrested.
November 25th, 2010
Writer Nevin Berktaş, author of the book “Difficult places that challenge the faith: Prison Cells” (published by
Yediveren Yayınları in 2010), is being tried on charges of “spreading propaganda for an illegal organisation”. The case about Berktaş’s book has been pending for ten years.
The book is related to the 22 years the writer spent in prison after the
1980 military coup and describes the process of resistance in prison cells. The health conditions of the writer are reportedly very bad, as a result of the hunger strikes she carried out in 1984 and 1996.
September 13th, 2010
A Scottish missionary, who was jailed in 2008 for criticising the Gambian president, has been
released. David Fulton was charged with sedition after emails he sent to friends in the UK were deemed offensive to President Yahya Jammeh. The 61-year-old and his wife spent 20 months in the notorious Mile 2 prison, facing hard labour and solitary confinement. The couple were also fined £6250 each.
April 19th, 2010
Geovanni Acate, director of
Radio Televisión Oriente, is
facing a 10-year prison sentence after being charged with disrupting public tranquility and instigating the public to commit the crime of rebellion. Geovanni Acate, as
Radio La Voz and other radio stations in the region, has been persecuted after reporting on the
protests that took place in
Bagua Grande in 2009.
April 8th, 2010
Moroccan journalist
Mohammed Attaoui was convicted of extortion and sentenced to two years in prison on
March 22. He claims he was set up by a former source and a forestry ministry official. Attaoui said he gave him the money — about
1,000 dirhams (90 euros) — to travel to Rabat or Meknes to take a test for a promotion, but he was arrested two hours later by national guard officers. He has staged a hunger strike demanding a fair trial. Attaoui, an environmental correspondent for the daily newspaper Al-Monataf wrote an expose about the illegal cedar wood trade in Morocco, and was arrested just 20 days after it was published.
